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Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Tuesday Morning Draw

I'm finally back on Canadian soil in spirit as well as body. This morning's draw features one of the teams new to me in this year's Scotties, the Valerie Sweeting rink from Alberta, who prevailed in the Alberta playdown in extra ends over the more familiar Kleibrink rink. Alberta is just so strong! This rink also features two left-handers, including the skip.
They're playing Jennifer Jones' Team Canada, and both teams are at 3-2, so this is a pretty important match.
Alberta took two in the first end, and then Team Canada did a hit and stick, calculating that their rock on the edge of the rings, which it was not. A steal of 2 by Canada in the third has Jones up 3-2.

End #4 The Alberta second's second shot is a come-around attempt that wrecks on a Canada guard and promotes it into the rings, and Canada lies three after the next shot. Alberta hit and stick to lie shot; Overton misses, Alberta hits and rolls out, still lying one, with a Canada rock on the edge of the rings out front. Then I got called away. Sweeting faces two Canada rocks for her final shot, is heavy, goes through the house, yielding another steal of two. I may decide to regard this as a foregone conclusion now.

Ooppsss! I let my attention wander for a couple of ends and what happens! Alberta score 1, and then steal 2 on a major final rock miss by Jones in the sixth end.

END #7 Well, as Russ Howard observes, this will not be a blanked end! There is a cluster of rocks in the front of the house. Nobody is achieving quite the cleanup both sides are trying. Sweeting makes an overthrow on her last rock, leaving Jones an angle raise, potentially for four. She scores three. This has been quite a roller coaster ride, but I am not expecting a comeback. On the other hand, I have recently been quite wrong on such issues.

Well, it is more exciting than I anticipated - Sweeting gets forced to one in eight and steals one in nine. Jones heads to ten one up with the hammer, but we`ve had some steals.

In the end Jones did win by scoring one in the tenth. Maybe more interesting, PEI came out of this draw atop the leaderboard at 5-1 (Ontario at 4-1 play this afternoon). This is again a rink I do not know, having assumed that Suzanne Gaudet would represent PEI Forever.